An Ember in the Ashes(96)

On goes the slaughter, and all the while, lurking in the back of my head is Cain’s ultimatum. The battle will end when you, Aspirant Veturius, defeat—or are defeated by—the leader of the enemy.
I’ve tried to seek out Helene and end this quickly, but she’s elusive. When she finally finds me, I feel as if I’ve been battling for days, though in truth, it has been no more than half an hour.
“Elias.” She shouts my name, but her voice is weak with reluctance. The battle slows to a halt as our men stop attacking each other, as the mist clears enough for them to turn and watch Helene and me. Slowly, they gather around us, forming a half circle pocked by empty spaces where living men should stand.
Hel and I face each other, and I wish for the Augurs’ power to know her mind. Her blonde hair is a tangle of blood, mud, and ice, her braid unpinned and hanging limply down her back. Her chest rises and falls heavily.
I wonder how many of my men she’s killed.
Her fist tightens around the hilt of her scim—a warning she knows I won’t miss.
Then she attacks. Though I pivot and bring up my scim to parry, my insides are paralyzed. I am staggered at her vehemence. Another part of me understands. She wants this madness done.
At first, I try to deflect her, unwilling to go on the offensive. But a decade of ruthlessly honed instinct rebels at such passivity. Soon, I’m fighting in earnest, using every trick I know to survive her onslaught.
My mind flickers to the attack poses Grandfather taught me, the ones the Blackcliff Centurions don’t know. The ones Helene won’t be able to defend against.
You can’t kill Hel. You can’t.
But what choice is there? One of us has to kill the other, or the Trial won’t end.
Let her kill you. Let her win.
As if she senses my weakness, Helene grits her teeth and drives me back, her pale eyes glacial, daring me to challenge her. Let her, let her, let her. Her scim cuts into my neck, and I counter with a quick thrust just as she’s about to take my head off.
My battle rage rushes through me, shoving all other thoughts aside. Suddenly, she isn’t Helene. She is an enemy who wants me dead. An enemy I must survive.

I fling my scim to the sky, watching with mercenary satisfaction as Helene’s eyes flick up to follow the weapon’s path. Then I strike, coming down on her like an executioner. My knee drives into her chest, and even through the storm, I hear the crack of a rib and the surprised whoosh of her breath leaving her.
She is beneath me, her ocean eyes terrified as I pin her scim arm down.
Our bodies are entangled, entwined, but Helene is foreign to me suddenly, unknowable as the heavens. I tear a dagger from my chest, and my blood roars as my fingers touch the cold hilt. She knees me and grabs her scim, determined to finish me before I can finish her. I’m too fast. I lift the dagger high, my rage peaking, holding like the highest note of a mountain storm.
And then I bring the blade down.
XXXIX: Laia
In the predawn darkness, the storm churning above Serra strikes with the wrath of a conquering army. The servants’ corridor swims in a half foot of rain, and Cook and I sweep out the water with rush brooms while Izzi tirelessly stacks sandbags. Rain lashes my face like the icy fingers of a ghost.
“Nasty day for a Trial!” Izzi calls to me over the downpour.
I don’t know what the Third Trial will be, and I don’t care, except to hope that it serves as a distraction for the rest of the school while I look for a secret entrance into Blackcliff.
No one else seems to share my indifference. In Serra, bets over who will win border on the obscene. The odds, Izzi tells me, have shifted to favor Marcus instead of Veturius.
Elias. I whisper his name to myself. I think of his face without the mask and the low, thrilling timbre of his voice when he whispered in my ear at the Moon Festival. I think of how he moved when he fought with Aquilla, that sensual beauty that took my breath away. I think of his implacable anger when Marcus nearly killed me.
Stop, Laia. Stop. He’s a Mask and I’m a slave, and thinking of him in this way is so wrong that I wonder for a second if the beating Marcus gave me has muddled my brain.
“Inside, Slave-Girl.” Cook takes my broom, her hair a wild halo in the storm. “Commandant’s calling.”
I rush upstairs, soaked through and shivering, to find the Commandant pacing her room with a violent energy, her blonde tresses unbound.
“My hair,” the woman says when I dart into her chambers. “Quickly, girl, or I’ll have it out of your hide.”
The second I finish, she leaves the room, snatching her weapons from the wall, not bothering to give me her usual litany of orders.
“Shot out of here like a wolf on the hunt,” Izzi says when I enter the kitchen. “Went straight for the amphitheater. That must be where the Trial is. I wonder—”
“You and the rest of the school, girl,” Cook says. “We’ll find out soon enough. We’re stuck inside today. Commandant said any slave out on the grounds will be killed on sight.”
Izzi and I exchange a glance. Cook kept us up preparing for the storm until past midnight last night, and I’d been planning to look for a secret entrance today.
“It’s not worth the risk, Laia,” Izzi warns me when Cook turns away. “You still have tomorrow. Rest your mind for a day, and a solution might present itself.” A rumble of thunder greets her comment. I sigh and nod. I hope she’s right.
“Get to work, you two.” Cook shoves a rag in Izzi’s hand. “Kitchen-Girl, you finish the silver, polish the banister, scrub the—”
Izzi rolls her eye and throws down the cloth. “Dust the furniture, finish the laundry, I know. Let it wait, Cook. The Commandant’s gone for an entire day. Can’t we appreciate that, even for a minute?” Cook presses her lips together in disapproval, but Izzi assumes a wheedling tone. “Tell us a story. Something scary.” She shivers in anticipation, and Cook makes a strange sound that could be a laugh or a groan.